David D. Lang
2222 70th Avenue SE
Mercer Island, WA 98040
(206) 408-7173
SeattleDL@comcast.net
Technical Project Management (16 years)
Structured Application-Software Engineering (35 years)
Applied Mechanics and Flight Dynamics (35 years)
Real Time Simulation Design and Process Software (14 years)
Computer/Telecommunications Systems Procurement (16 years)
Data Base Management and Transaction Processing (6 years)
In addition to specific technical expertise, my broad background provides skills for inter-disciplinary problem solving. Listed below are some examples of my experience that illustrate professional attributes and broad knowledge base.
Responsibility: Personally responsible (with no peer or management review) for the design and authenticity of the flight simulations on which all NASA Astronauts received critical launch-abort training for the Gemini rendezvous and Apollo Lunar missions.
Initiative: Became the Scientific Investigator on the Gemini tethered space flight experiments as a personally instigated aside to official technical management duties.
Judgment: Was elected to serve on the board of directors of the Phamis corporation, a high technology medical information system company. Served as a technical specialist in NASA’s Mission Control Center on three different manned space flights.
Written Communication: Written published papers, full length Text Books (both privately published), Proposals, and high-tech Business Plans; Been an Editorial Advisor for the magazine “Software Practitioner” for 12 years.
Top-Down Structured Thinking: Employed top-down design and structured programming in the early '60s (well before its popularization). That instances of this software, written 30 years ago, are still in use today by NASA testifies to its robust structure.
Management: Planned, budgeted and managed groups of up to 15 NASA engineers responsible for astronaut simulations and flight training. Managed national telecommunications network implementation for the Public Health Service hospitals.
Public Presentation: Presented papers at technical conferences, taught engineering courses to professional engineers and the NASA Lunar Astronaut classes. Plays music professionally.
Brief Summary of Professional Experience
As an Independent Consultant 1981 to Present
For a brief description of a few of the consulting jobs below, see Elaboration on a few consulting jobs.
Currently consulting with Skyder LLC to provide them with simuations of control dynamics of a unique new forest logging system.
Currently consulting with Blue Origin LLC to provide them with simuation of flight dynamics of various components of their private space venture vehicle (see the web site).
Recently performed various original dynamic simulations of the Space Elevator for the Institute for Scientific Research (Fairmont, WV) in areas not previously examined, such as construction deployment, climber-dynamics, and wind-response; this culminated in a variety of papers that were presented at technical conferences.
Recently consulted with Sound Design and Products LLC inventing, designing and prototyping a consumer product; wrote and submitted a patent; performed liaison with electronic and plastic fabricators and suppliers; and instituted and executed a marketing plan; serving as web-master Secure Shopping Cart, and maintenance (see the web site).
Consulted with European Space Agency astronaut Wubbo Ockels and Drachen Foundation to develop the LadderMill invention for wind driven electric power generation.
Consulted on the StepAIRSEDS tethered satellite experiment for Michigan Technic Company and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; this required simulation of tether bare wire non-uniform current flow in a simulated space plasma environment.
Assisted NASA Johnson Manned Space Flight Center in ground-based control response of X-38 vehicle (suspended with tethers) by means of modifying my GTOSS tether simulation.
Assisted NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in new techniques for electrodynamic tether operations with their ProSEDS tether experiment. Provided consulting services to the Naval Research Labs for their TiPS (currently in orbit) and ATEX tethered satellite programs.
Provided a thermal analysis capability in GTOSS for Martin Marietta to study the thermal response of the STEX tethered satellite system for the Naval Research Labs .
Developed Tether Analysis Design software (GTOSS) for McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Aircraft, in behalf of NASA Johnson Space Center of Houston. Served in NASA Houston Mission Control Center as a tether expert for Shuttle missions STS-46 and -75.
Designed Hydro-Electric Turbine Optimized Blade Controller Software for Seawell MicroSystems of Seattle in behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers power project on the Columbia river.
Devised a Compiler Performance Measurement method (in an Avionics Environment) for Intermetrics Corporation of Boston in behalf of Boeing Aircraft of Seattle.
Developed Aircraft Landing Gear Loads Simulation for Brock Associates of Dallas, in behalf of Learjet Aircraft Corporation of Wichita.
Employed by US Public Health Service 1975 - 1981
Founding participant in a state of the art medical information system for the 35 nationwide US Public Health Service medical facilities. Required designing on-line user interfaces for computer naive users. Had sole responsibility for specification, procurement, and operation of telecommunications supporting software development and on-line terminals.
Procured computing resources ranging in value to $10 million, encompassing multi-processing real time systems to on-line transaction processing systems (including nation wide telecommunications capability).
Advanced the state of the art of procurement by devising specification and evaluation techniques that transcend specific computer architecture. Consulted by US General Accounting Office (GAO) in their study to streamline computer system procurements, and gave a cost evaluation presentation to NASA's Chief of Procurement.
Employed by NASA Manned Spacecraft Center 1963 - 1975
Developed programs to analyze orbital rendezvous. These were the genesis of NASA's rendezvous flight procedures development for Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Shuttle.
Authored the flight dynamics programs used to investigate all Astronaut aircraft accidents that occurred during the Gemini and Apollo programs.
Played a key role in designing Gemini XI and XII tethered flight experiments. As Scientific Investigator, was required to be present in NASA Mission control during (and responsible for debriefing the Astronauts after) these Gemini flights and reported results to the scientific community, ultimately appearing on the Voice of America.
Taught a complete college graduate-level dynamics course and a statistics refresher course to NASA’s third class of Astronauts (the Apollo Lunar Astronauts).
Responsible for software development of Astronaut training simulators for launch/abort, reentry, and landing. These simulators were ready on schedule and within budget to support all Gemini and Apollo flights.
Specified and programmed system models for a Shuttle simulator to develop back-up flight procedures, and functioned as a simulator pilot for flight procedure development.
Played a major role in specifying the Shuttle Mission Simulator computer. A significant innovation of this procurement was my design of a system architecture independent technique for specifying and evaluating proposed systems, yielding a highly cost effective solution, accepted within budget and on schedule.
Employed by Ling-Tempco-Vought (LTV) 1958 - 1963
Performed landing gear analyses; resulting in procedures adopted by the US Navy as the standard for analyzing landing dynamic structural loads of carrier-based aircraft landings.
Developed flexible launch vehicle aero-elastic loads analysis methods and presented a related seminar to the faculty and graduates of California Technical Institute (Cal Tech).
Devised and evaluated statistical Monte-Carlo flight performance enhancements for the Scout (launch vehicle) based Radio Attenuation Measurement research flight program.
Taught college graduate level courses in dynamics to practicing engineers.
Educational Experience
BA Rice University in 1957; BS Mechanical Engineering Rice University 1958 with 181 semester hours credit emphasizing; Mathematics (32 hrs), Physics (23), and Chemistry (16). Then since college; Physiology, Celestial Mechanics, Calculus of Variations, Assembly Language programming, Computer interfaces, Numerical analysis for computing, Advanced programming techniques, Structured programming.
Typical Publications
Lang, Lincoln, Analysis of the Influence of Arresting Cables on Main Landing Gear, for Navy Bureau of Weapons as document no. Chance Vought E9R-12175, 1959
Zama, Lang, Brotzen, Steady State Creep of Tin Near the Melting Point, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, vol 8, 1960.
Keith, Lang, Vectorial and Analytical Mechanics, Educational text published internally by LTV and Chrysler Space Division 1960.
Lang, Nolting, Operations With Tethered Space Vehicles, Proceedings of the Gemini Summary Conference, 1967.
Vogler, Gleser, Lang, Samson, Beneficial Impact of Automation on a Medical Records Department, American Medical Records Association publication, 1978.
Gleser, Lang, PHAMIS, A Multi-hospital Integrated Medical Information System, Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium on Computer Application in Medical Care, Oct 1979.
Gleser, Bayard, Lang, Benchmarking for the Best, Datamation magazine May 1981.
Lang, General 3-D Animation Techniques for Tether Dynamics, published in Proceedings of the AIAA International Tether Conference, May 1989.
Lang, Maley, Pridgeon, A Free Flying Tether Experiment and Space Structure for the ISY published in Proceedings of the International Space Year Conference held in Dressden Germany, April 1990.
Lang, Estes, Simulation of TSS Passive Skiprope Damper, published in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Tethers in Space held in Wash. DC, April 1995.
Typical Courses/Educational Presentations
The Structural Dynamics of Flexible Booster Systems, presented as an Aeronautics Department seminar for Graduate students and Faculty at California Inst. of Technology, Pasadena CA 1962.
Theory and Application of Dynamics, a 4 semester, Graduate level course in applied mechanics presented to LTV engineering personnel from 1960 to 1962, Dallas TX.
Operations With Tethered Space Vehicles, research findings presented to engineering personnel at Wright Patterson and NASA Langley installations in 1962.
Flight Mechanics, a 4 semester, Graduate level dynamics and Celestial Mechanics course presented to engineers at the NASA Johnson Spacecraft Center, Houston TX, from 1963 to 1965.
DCPS Installation Profile, a presentation on software methods of real-time space flight simulation, given at an SDS Users group meeting, 1964.
Flight and Orbital Mechanics, a 40 hour course presented to the third (lunar) Astronaut class at the Manned Spacecraft Center, 1964.
Probability and Statistics, a refresher course presented to the second and third Astronaut classes at the Manned Spacecraft Center, 1965.
Gemini Tethered Vehicles, the original work done by the author on the feasibility of gravity gradient stabilization and general operations of tethered vehicles in space, presented by the author to the Chief Administrator of NASA to gain approval for the actual tethered flight experiments, 1966.
Part Task Trainers, a presentation on flight simulation techniques, given at the Intra-NASA Symposium on Simulation State-of-the-Art, Houston, TX 1967.
Operations With Tethered Space Vehicles, presented at the Gemini Summary Conference, Houston TX 1967.
Simulation and the Use of Hybrid Computers, presented at an AIAA Seminar at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK, 1969.
GTOSS Generalized Tethered Ojbect Simulation, presented at the Tether Dynamics Workshop of the AIAA International Conference on Tethers in Space, Arlington VA, 1986.
Space Tether Control, presented at the SAE Aerospace Control and Guidance Conference, Monterey CA, 1988.
Stationkeeping Between Space Station and Orbiter via Tethers, to be presented at the AIAA International Tether Dynamics Workshop, May 1989.
General 3-D Animation Techniques for Tether Dynamics, presented at the AIAA International Tether Conference, May 1989.
Simulation of TSS Passive Skiprope Damper, presented at the Fourth International Conference on Tethers in Space held in Wash. DC, April 1995.